Immediate increase in participation with Citizen Space
The challenge
By their own admission, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council (DLR CC) were covering the basics when it came to public consultation - but not much more than that.
Press Officer Jim Ryan says, 'our primary focus was on consulting with the public in the manner prescribed to us in legislation – i.e. when we were planning a project we put our advert in the paper on the correct date, made the documentation available and invited people to view it and write or email us with their views'.
The Council became starkly aware of the limitations of this approach when they embarked on a major undertaking – a new €36m library and cultural centre – yet still saw minimal levels of public engagement. Despite it being one of the County Council's most significant projects, only 33 people made a submission during the statutory consultation process.
DLR CC decided they had to improve their public consultation activity. And that included a stronger online offering, better suited to 21st century audiences.
The approach
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown decided to adopt Citizen Space because they wanted a dedicated online consultation platform – something that was 'ready made' and that could make a difference to their activity straight away.
More than that, the straightforward pricing model – a fixed-fee subscription, including maintenance and support – was a good fit for their needs. DLR CC's public consultation is managed by the Communications team. With Citizen Space being easy to use, and a little help from our expert account managers, the Communications team was soon able to manage the digital consultation activity themselves. This meant the work was not bottlenecked by dependencies on the Council IT team, and there was no silo between offline and online activity.
By adopting Citizen Space, DLR CC opened up many more possibilities for effective digital promotion of its consultations, and the Council quickly started to reap the benefit in terms of participation:
The results
And the change has been about more than increasing response rate. For DLR CC, switching to Citizen Space has been a shift to a more digitally-aware way of working in general. This has enabled the Council to bring additional voices into their decision-making processes, expand their staff's skill set and enhance their reputation with both residents and elected members.
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I would like to thank and compliment the staff of Delib for their professionalism and the level of service they have provided during our first year using Citizen Space. It is always daunting when trying to change one's work practices and they have assisted and guided us with great patience during this time. They are a pleasure to work with.
Delib is a govtech leader specialising in consultation and engagement, trusted by over 600 government organisations worldwide, including major planning projects. Since 2004, we've been building secure, accessible digital platforms to make participation simpler, fairer, and more inclusive. Our flagship product, Citizen Space, was built in collaboration with the UK government and has supported more than 11 million responses across over 110,000 democratic activities.